Across the whole city of Boston, by the first of September, there had been just 13 homicides.
Beantown is on track to become the safest big city in America this year.
Some very violent cities, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, have seen improvements almost as big, in proportional terms, as Boston.
Yet Boston is worth looking at, precisely because it shows how safe American cities could be, and what it would take to achieve that.
Thanks to the tech and finance industries, once-rough neighbourhoods like South Boston are now among the most expensive places to live anywhere in America.
“What you hear is, ‘It’s all, we’re gentrifying, or Boston has the best trauma centres’,” says Christopher Winship, a sociologist at Harvard University.
Since the 1990s, when the idea of a “Boston Miracle” first gained traction, hundreds of American police departments have visited the city to learn. »
